Oh men. MEN! I apologize, from the deepest cockles of my heart, for the no-doubt-emotionally-devastating wasteland that your lives have been during the prolonged hiatus of CrimeBeat! But fear not, sinners, for the Right Reverend is here to give you succor.

CHARGE: Being so sweet I think I got the diabeetus.

Speaking of sucking, I’d like to start with a hat tip to Less Snead, Enos Staniel Kroenke, Jeff Fisher, Kevin Demoff and everyone associated with the Rams for giving us what this season has sorely lacked: unalloyed pleasure in watching a team completely collapse on every level.

Yes, the Browns are Browning and making a run at the Matt Millen Memorial Trophy. And Bleergh help me, I hope they do it, because if we can’t actually give Jimmy Haslam a colonoscopy with a RotoRooter, I’ll settle for the metaphorical equivalent. But I don’t think any of us can really enjoy watching this particular train wreck without some pity creeping in. Since they jettisoned their only truly hateable player in the off-season (looking good, Johhny!), all we really had for entertainment value was the RGIII Injury Clock, which of course struck midnight before the final whistle opening week. After a while, you’re just waiting for the death rattle so that everyone can pack up and go home.

And there are the other teams with worse records than the Rams, dumpster fires that are burning hotter if not as brightly and with such novel odors. The Bearistocrats have basically just stunk in relatively inoffensive (HA!) ways, with Kevin White becoming an IR Hero and Alshon preserving his body for free agency by spiking his urine test with rhino testosterone to escape the meat grinder for 4 games. The jaguars (they have forfeited their right to capitalization) are the Cleveland Indians from Major League, except that instead of rallying to fight the owner’s “suck for relocation” plan, they are playing like they are behind it 100 percent.  The Niners are no help- any joy I might have gotten from watching Chip slowly cooking over a pile of burning Oregon media guides is counterbalanced by the Hot Taeks I keep seeing about how this is what happens when Kaepernick Disrespecks Our Militury. (Yes, there are the Jets, but I can’t separate my own personal glee at watching them step on every rake in the yard from how funny it looks to disinterested football fans). So all we really had were Recently Shitty Teams who were being shitty in Really Boring Ways.

And then came the Rams. The opened-the-season-3-and-1 Rams. The even-the-people-who-agreed-with-relocation-thought-the-Rams-fucked-St.-Louis-on-the-way-out-the-door Rams. The we’re-not-fucking-going-7-9 Rams. The we-mortgaged-the-farm-to-pick-the-more-NFL-ready-QB-in-the-draft-and-then-benched-him-for-Case-Fucking-Keenum Rams.

And boy, have they been entertaining. It takes a special kind of team to give their coach and GM secret contract extensions. Unless you are (rightly) afeared of what your new “fan”base will think about bringing back a duo who have managed to piss away the efforts of numerous Prob Owl defensive players and two of the best kickers in the game (throwing ability notwithstanding).

Fisher and Snead allegedly got these extensions over the summer in reward for being mediocrely mediocre. However, Kroenke and Demoff apparently expected them to actually be competitive once the move was complete. I really love the depth of organizational stupidity that his expectation engenders. Apparently they thought Fisher had just been slow-playing it the last couple of years in Tennessee and could turn it on whenever he wanted. Whelp, it turns out that Fisher is even worse when he’s actually trying to win. Additionally, the aforementioned farm-mortgage subject showed no signs of being AFL-ready,  let alone NFL, and has shown no signs of progress since being thrust into the starter’s role.

This, of course, put Demoff and Kroenke in a position where they would (under normal circumstances) just part ways after the season with Fisher and possibly Snead with a hearty handshake and a boot on the ass. But no- that’s not Hollywood enough for the New Look Rams. The first week of December, word leaked out that the Rams had given them two-year contract extensions, to the dismay of…well…everyone not in the Fisher and Snead families.

The Rams were quick to assert that these extensions had been offered during the preseason, apparently trying to convince the public that although they were stupid for thinking Fisher/Snead were anything other than the shitshow they had been for the previous four years, they weren’t SO stupid as to still believe that after another three-quarters of a season. After giving Fisher one last game to tie the record for all-time regular season losses (165) , the Rams kicked him to the curb and promoted special teams coordinator and unlucky lucky sperm John Fassel, who has pre-emptively been told he will not be considered for the permanent job.

Side fact note: Fisher’s co-record holder , Dan Reeves, needed 357 regular season games to get there, while Fisher did it more than a full season (18 games) faster.

The conspiracy theory that keeps popping up is that the extensions were essentially bonuses for Snead and Fisher being shitty enough to discourage St. Louis from going all out to keep the team (see jaguars, above). Of course, in true Snead-Fisher style, they even managed to fuck that up,  since ‘civic leaders’ in this Bleergh-forsaken town were willing to stand up and say “We don’t care how shitty the team is, or that we’re still paying off the current stadium, or that the majority of citizenry is opposed, we’ll build you a $1.1 billion stadium.” Thankfully, it all fell through and the $400 million-plus in public money was instead spent on public schools, infrastructure repair and economic stimulus. Oh wait…

In any event, the utter disarray of the organization caused Much Rejoicing and Mirth around the country. Here, finally, we had the parade of football fuckups that we all needed in order to enjoy the season. Kroenke not only looks like a tool (which he normally does), he looks like an incompetent boob of a tool who will be lucky to draw sellouts (by the NFL’s quirky accounting) in any foreseeable season other than the opening of EnosLand. Demoff looks like the empty-headed empty suit that he is. Their only scoring weapon told the media they were running a “middle school offense”, and the lame-fuck attempts at trick plays in last night’s Poopfest suggests that they will likely get held back a grade next year as well. As a nation, America needed to Learn to Laugh Again, and I’d like to thank the Rams for volunteering to become the butt of the joke.

CHARGE: Fuck you, Urban.

Normally, I don’t pay attention to college football. This is because 1. I went to a Division III school where football ranked slightly below Ultimate Frisbee and the 100m Keg Carry on the athletics hierarchy, 2. The system is hopelessly corrupt in ways FIFA can only dream of, and 3. Spread offenses reduce the beautiful complexity of the game to such a degree that I sometimes weep.

As such, I normally stay above the fray when it comes to the continuing pretense that most of the players in the top 40 programs are in any real sense ‘students’, or that paying Les Miles $12 million not to coach makes the least amount of sense in a state where their K-12 school budget shortfall was $17 million before they started cutting funding back further.

But I found out this week that Urban Fucking Meyer, Ohio born and bred, has apparently become a secessionist. This came to my attention in reading a story about Torrance Gibson, a former five-star recruit for (the) Ohio State who signed a letter of intent to join traditional football powerhouse Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College next year. (Fun note: George W. Bush became the first sitting president to speak at a community college graduation at MGCCC. I never thought I would miss that recklessly murderous kleptocrat…) Meyer claims that Gibson might not be leaving, despite having done the whole LoI thing.

Anyway, Gibson never played a game for Meyer, because they redshirted him for incompetence his freshman year and he was suspended from the school last year. And here’s where shit gets enraging for me. The school suspended him, therefore he could not represent the school by playing football. And Fucking Meyer had the gall, the fucking NERVE, to draw a distinction between the football program (or at least the Athletic Department) and the University, as if they operate independently and just happen to fucking share a campus like two Craigslist roommates. In reference to the suspension, Urban stated that “It was not from the athletic department or football,” and that “I disagree with it.” Ohio State never disclosed the reason for the suspension (nor should they under federal law), other than that it was for a violation of the student code of conduct. And let me tell you from professional experience: universities, and especially state universities which are subject to additional legal scrutiny as public entities, do not hand out year-long suspensions to students for drinking beer in the dorms or cheating on a test. Not to say that university disciplinary proceedings are uniformly fair and just, and that no one has ever been suspended for a shitty reason, but for Meyer to act like he shouldn’t be deprived of one of his precious precious “student-athletes” just because the University has determined that he broke the rules to such an extent that it does not want him anywhere near the goddamned campus for a year is insane.

Again, I don’t buy into the pretense that most of the football and basketball players in the top programs are students in any meaningful way. But to openly flout the institution that allows you to make $5.8 million per year on the backs of barely-compensated teenagers is arrogance to the point that even President Elect Fuckface would tell him he needs to pump the brakes. Gaaaaaaaaah

CHARGE: He knows what he did.

Seriously- ask him about Vegas and the Fun Dungeon. 

LATE UPDATE: Video has surfaced. Janay Rice has issued her standard apology letter as a matter of form.

CHARGE: Rollin’ out his hot dog next to the Hot Dog Roller. Snapping into his Slim Jim. Microwaving his burrito.

WHEW! Finally, a story straight in CrimeBeat!’s wheelhouse. Former Atlanta Falcon running back and originator of the “Dirty Bird” Jamal Anderson was busted at 2 a.m. Wednesday morning in suburban Atlanta. According to police reports, a ‘visibly intoxicated’ Anderson entered a convenience store in Suwanee, Georgia. Presumably taking the hint from the giant display of beef jerky, Anderson took out his junk and began masturbating in the middle of the store.

Like you do.

The clerk promptly called the police, who issued him a ticket (for some reason I really hoped it was under the category of “muffler violation”, but it was criminal trespass) because the clerk decided not to press charges. Displaying a southern hospitality rarely extended to people of color, the police then offered to get him a ride home. Tellingly, however, they offered to call an Uber for him rather than take him in their patrol car, because…ew.       

Several notes:

1.       Suwanee, Georgia was named one of Family Circle Magazine’s Top Ten Places for Families. I’m going to go ahead and assume they may lose a spot or two after this.

1a.      I don’t know if Family Circle Magazine has anything to do with the “comic” Family Circus. But if it does, fuck them too.

2.       In an apparent effort to convince Family Circle’s editors not to leave them off the list, the captain of the Suwanee Police downplayed the incident, stating that “[t]here was nothing out of the ordinary, outside of him masturbating in the store[.]”

3.       Hehe…”dirty bird” indeed…

4.       Personally, I would rank this below Kellen Winslow’s Target Parking Lot Follies, though I’m not fully certain why. I think it’s because Winslow was 1. a well-known tool, 2. an active player (for the Jets!) at the time, and 3. allegedly looking for a Boston Market and got lost. Feel free to debate in the Comments if you disagree.

And as always, Foxboro delenda est.